I recently graduated from Brown University with a double major in history and literary arts. I've previously worked at ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, and have written for USA TODAY and the Washington City Paper. I'm focusing on controversy and college, and life post-graduation. Check out some of my previous work at college.usatoday.com/cara-newlon/ and browndailyherald.com. I can be contacted at cnewlon@forbes.com.

Hooking Up And Marriage: Luxury Goods For Educated Millennials

In the 1950s, it was thought that women attended college to get their Mrs as much as their BA. Today, young women typically wait for marriage and babies into their 30s and 40s—unless they don’t go to college.

It is now atypical for non-college graduates to have children in wedlock, according to an analysis presented at the Population Association of America in May.

The study analyzed the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which interviewed 9,000 young adults born between 1981 and 1998 annually from 1997 to 2011. Only 34% of college-educated women aged 26 to 31 had borne a child; in contrast, 65% of women without college degrees had become mothers by 2011. Among non-college educated parents, 74% of mothers and 70% of fathers had at least one child outside of marriage.

“Marriage is a luxury good,” says Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University professor of public policy and co-author of the study. “People who are marrying in large numbers are the winners in our new economy. They’re the ones who can get two good jobs, pool their incomes and make their marriage work.”

For the college educated, “marriage used to be the first step into adulthood,” says Cherlin. “Increasingly, it’s the last step. A college educated young adult goes to graduate school, invests in their careers, starts work, often lives with a partner, but only marry when they think they’re finally ready… Marriage is kind of the capstone, the last brick put in place.”

But for young people without college degrees, childbirth can be the first step into adulthood. The data suggests that mothers with only a high school education will have most of their children by their late 20s.

Cherlin’s analysis may reflect a larger story of a growing class divide between educated and un-educated millennial. And this socioeconomic divide in the way we approach relationships plays out on a smaller scale within the college campus.

Hook-Up Culture

“It has been clearly documented across campuses that students from lower social class backgrounds tend to hook up less,” says Rachel Allison, an incoming assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University.

Allison co-authored a University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) study released this March, which interviewed 87 UIC undergraduates from diverse backgrounds about their sexual behaviors. This study was the qualitative part of a larger analysis surveying 2,500 undergraduates across 22 colleges and universities.

Richer college students report delaying commitment in favor of hooking up, Allison says, to focus “on a period of self-development.” But working-class undergraduates—who are more likely to commute to campus or work to supplement their tuition—often cannot afford to party, join a fraternity, or live on-campus.

“[Working-class students] did see hooking-up as something as they would be interested in, but they really couldn’t do it for those reasons,” says Allison.“When you’re essentially removed from the center of campus party life, hooking-up retains this symbolic, media-driven allure.”

While poorer students in Allison’s study reported feelings of missing out, other research indicates that working-class college students may actually approach relationships looking towards a strong commitment such as marriage.

Sociologists Laura Hamilton of Indiana University and Elizabeth A. Armstrong of the University of Michigan released a study in 2009 in which they interviewed a group of female students at a college in the Midwest over the course of their college careers. Sixty-eight percent of the students came from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds, while 32% came from working or lower-middle class backgrounds.

Around 94% of the more privileged women stated at some point that they did not want a boyfriend. “I’ve always looked at college as the only time in your life when you should be a hundred percent selfish,” one woman remarked. “I have the rest of my life to devote to a husband or kids or my job… but right now, it’s my time.”

According to the study, female undergraduates from wealthier backgrounds often viewed committed relationships as threats to their greater career goals and ambitions. On-campus romance is therefore often limited to sex, alcohol and parties.

In contrast, the study found that working-class students approached romance with a “faster transition into adulthood.”

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